Chapter 23
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
JUNE
I sit straight up, panic in my throat, gasping for air. The heavy night presses around me and I rub my eyes, trying to dispel it. Confusion clouds my awareness as I take in my surroundings. Dean lies next to me, shirtless, wearing the same tactical pants he unzipped into shorts. The unmistakable scent of Irish Spring rolls off him as he sleeps, his chest moving with deep breaths.
“Dean!” Thompson’s voice sounds a long way off. “Dean, June, we gotta go or we gotta make a stand. Get a gun and a pack and get on a boat!”
“Shit, Dean, wake up.” I shake his shoulder and he blinks up at me twice before his eyes snap open.
“Get up, everybody up and to the boats!” Thompson’s shout is louder now, and Dean sits bolt upright. My heart pounds against my chest, adrenaline shaking off any lingering sleepiness.
“Fuck.” Dean crouches, the blanket dragging into the sand as he throws open the tent flap. “Get your shoes on. We need to get to the boat. We need to get out of here.”
“What about Pierce and Charlie?”
“Fucking Pierce. Their boat left hours ago, right after you crashed.” Dean throws on his t-shirt, a twin one to my patriotic cat.
Under normal circumstances it would’ve made me laugh.
These are anything but normal circumstances.
“They left,” I echo.
A box of ammo peeks out from a zippered pocket of the backpack Dean slides into. He straps a rifle to himself. The glass scope glints in the moonlight.
“We have to worry about ourselves right now. We can’t help anyone if we get mowed down in a firefight.”
Dropping my corner of the blanket, I grab a second backpack, following Dean’s lead.
Sure enough, the low rumble of ATV engines follows Thompson’s cries to get to the boats.
Heart in my throat, pulse racing, I open up the black backpack. Ammo, a pistol, more shotgun shells. A grenade? I tilt my head, considering it. Maybe the overprepared Ken Dolls are onto something.
It sure seems like they had the right idea with being overprepared.
“How long?” Dean asks.
“We’ve got three minutes or less.” Thorne bites off the words, emerging from the neighboring tent, shouldering a pack of his own.
I look around, somehow dazed, fear so tight and high that I can’t quite process what is happening.
Food, check, water, check. Soap .
We need the soap. Just in case. Can I fit the blanket in my backpack?
“June, let’s go. Come on, princess, we don’t have time to waste.”
The rumble of the ATVs grow louder and my stomach knots, Dean’s words forgotten.
“We gotta go, Dean.” Thorne slips down the sand bank, catching himself as he runs towards the shore, backpack clipped across his chest. A wave catches him at the hips, and he dives into the surf like a dolphin. Or a Marine, more likely an ex-Marine.
I laugh, a choked, high sound.
“Princess, breathe.”
This is it. This is it. They’ll take me again, they’ll put me in a musty closet. Shut me up in it and I’ll never see the sun again.
“Dr. June Legarde.” Dean’s hand fits around my wrist, forcing my arms through the straps of the backpack. “Snap out of it.”
He clicks the strap across my chest and I suck in a breath as though he slapped me.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He bends his head down, assessing my face. “Okay.”
He tugs at my wrist and I follow behind him, sliding down the sandy dune. He hauls me past the embers of the fire, still glowing. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours since I fell asleep.
My eyes snag on the propane tank next to the fire, Dean continuing to propel me to the water. Ahead of us, Thompson and Thorne are already to their boat, Thorne pulling up the anchor as Thompson clears the ladder.
The ATVs roar now, the first coming into view on the clear, starlit night. Two hundred yards away. A hundred and fifty. Shit. We’ll never make it.
“We have to go.” Dean pulls me hard, and the salty surf kisses my bare feet. My flip-flops must have come off at some point.
“June?” Dean tugs me towards the shoreline, and I half jog after him. My hands shake on a rifle I don’t remember grabbing. By the fire, the amberjack lure sparkles prettily where we left it.
“Get to the boat,” Thompson roars from the sandbar, his pack slung across his back, a rifle in his hands. A wave slaps into his hips, and I’ve never wished more that this stretch of beach was easier to park a damned boat on.
I glance back at the lure, and it hits me.
“I know where the wreck is,” I whisper, my eyes wide.
“I know you do.” It’s full of his signature cockiness. That’s how sure he is of me.
We walk into the water, bathwater warm and pitch black. I’ve done plenty of night dives, but I don’t love the idea of stepping on a pissed off sting ray at the moment.
Or getting shot.
Neither seem like a great plan.
Deeper now, Dean keeps a hand on my backpack, half towing me along in his wake as he powers through the water.
Thorne or Thompson open fire from their boat, and everything dissolves into chaos.
The unmistakable sound of bullets rip through the night, shouts of “Don’t shoot the woman!” follow, along with Russian that bounces right off me.
A fleeting moment of gratitude passes through me for the foresight of buying black backpacks. Hopefully we’ll be harder to aim at, impossible to see in the pitch dark.
Aim at.
That’s it.
My mind flashes back to the shore, to the embers of the fire. The meal cooked on the propane burner.
“I have an idea,” I gasp out, rewarded with a mouthful of saltwater.
Dean is silent, an underwater missile. He’d put Michael Phelps to shame. But Michael Phelps has never been under the gun quite like this.
I choke out a little laugh, gasping for air, and kick out, finally urged into a maximum effort swim. The current tugs at the rifle strap along my back, and this is not my idea of a fun workout.
If only my stupid watch had battery to see me now, it would probably be shocked by my cardio output.
My lungs burn, crying out for air, and I swing my head to the side, spending a precious second to look over my shoulder. The men are on the beach now, four ATVs parked around the dying campfire, flanking the white propane tank. A group peels off shirts and boots and swim after us.
Not great.
I kick harder, my quads and shoulders burning with the extended effort. Swimming with a pack in the dark with this current is absolute insanity.
I am not going to die. I will not let them take me.
Not again, not now. Not ever.
My knees hit the sandbar. Salt stings my eyes and I stand, the laden, soaked backpack and rifle threatening to topple me over backwards.
“Fuck.”
The men in the water are closing in. Panic grips me.
These assholes.
These assholes murdered my father. They kidnapped me when I was thirteen. They stole so much joy from my life.
Anger burns the fear away, until all that is left is a molten core, seething inside me.
Dean forges ahead, climbing the ladder, tossing his pack into the boat like it weighs nothing.
“How much propane was left? In the tank on the beach?” My fingers find the gun.
“This is not the time to worry about littering.” Dean yanks me up the ladder, and I wince at the brute force move.
“I have a rifle, and I have an idea,” I manage.
Dean follows my gaze. An evil grin spreads across his face and he closes the gap between us, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“I like the way you think, princess.” He angles his head, studying me for a short moment.
I swallow.
“But you have to hurry. Go line up the shot.” In an instant, he helps take my backpack off and presses the gun into my hands.
I swing myself up onto the bow of the boat, kneeling on it, my cheek pressed to the butt of the gun as I line up the sights.
I take a deep breath. Another.
“Come on, June. Steady.”
The crosshairs are there. All I have to do is squeeze.
The gun barks, recoil slamming into my shoulder, making me wince.
The explosion doesn’t happen instantly. Instead, the impact of the shot knocks the propane tank into the bonfire. I pull my face away from the sight, frowning.
Then it happens.
A massive, action movie worthy explosion.
“Boom,” I say, slightly dazed.
Flames billow into the sky. People scramble as the parked ATVs get caught in the fallout. Screams follow them and I blink, an echo of the bright explosion searing into my retinas. Dean says something, but I can’t make it out; the recoil of the rifle must’ve knocked some of my hearing out.
He pulls me back to the deck of the boat, taking the gun away.
The engine roars to life, and I sit on the pleather seat where my father taught me how to fish and watch the chaos.
It’s not over yet.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the worst of it hasn’t even started.